Ramp Week: Ramp Gravy

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Last week I told you about the time I caused a box of Popeye's biscuits to be quarantined and greedily devoured was forced to eat every last one myself. The morning after the morning after the big breakfast sandwich-athon, I realized that not only did I still have a few biscuits and slices of cheese remaining, but I also had a few dozen ramps (a permanent fixture in my crisper during the all-too-short season of my favorite vegetable), a bit of heavy cream (leftover from a recent crème fraîche-making binge), and major hankering for some Southern comfort.

You can probably see where this is going.

Cream gravy, made with a blond roux, onions, cream, and plenty of black pepper is a natural partner for buttery mashed potatoes, chicken-fried steak, or yes, biscuits. After all, what goes better with fatty starch* than a bit of starchy fat?

*and in case anyone was wondering, yes, chicken-fried steak counts as fatty starch with a bit of token beef thrown in for good measure

It's really nothing more than an intensely-flavored French béchamel (that's white sauce for you Francophobes), and it takes all of ten minutes to make properly—just about the time it takes to properly re-heat a biscuit and fry up an egg. It's the right thing to do. Your breakfast will thank you, I promise.

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J. Kenji López-Alt is the Managing Culinary Director of Serious Eats, and author of the James Beard Award-nominated column The Food Lab, where he unravels the science of home cooking. A restaurant-trained chef and former Editor at Cook's Illustrated magazine, his first book, The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science is a New York Times Best-Seller, the recipient of a James Beard Award, and was named Cookbook of the Year in 2015 by the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

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